The spell breaks for mentalists’ ‘pseudoscience’

Magicians are under fire for claiming they use neurolinguistic programming to read people's minds

Some psychologists are upset at the deployment of purported scientific techniques in magic tricks, according to the Times.

The newspaper cites a study (paywall) co-authored by Gustav Kuhn, a reader in psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London, in which a group of people watched a magic trick. Those who knew that the performer was a magician were as likely to believe his false claims about being able to read a person's mind as those who were told he was a psychologist. Yet according to Kuhn, the neurolinguistic programming (NLP) techniques claimed by some magicians - in which facial cues and body language can be read - is "complete pseudoscience". So how do magicians feel about this?